The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - LOL

LOL - resume article effects!

I wonder how much of this discussion was provoked deliberately. ;-)

Hello, codependent needy people. Joel is just this guy with a blog who has this company. Ignore Joel if he is that disturbing.

Now back to your regularly scheduled feces-flinging.

(splat! OW! spladdap!... whunk!)

PS: Where is Don Martin, the legendary Mad Magazine artist, with his wonderful alliterative written sound effects, when you need him!? ...

Bored Bystander
Monday, January 26, 2004

The reason people are upset is that the majority of people are on the opposite side of the resume process. They've spent hours squeezing keywords into their dismally short list of achievements only to hear someone like Joel just dismissed it out of hand. The best suggestion I've ever heard for resume writers is to read 50 average ones first. If he can't improve his own resume after that, he doesn't deserve a job.

Wil Dyler
Monday, January 26, 2004

Do you mean onomatopoetic rather than alliterative?

Zahid
Monday, January 26, 2004

Oh come on, it's not hard to write a good resume. The real reason most resumes are dismissed "out of hand" is because they're written by stupid, careless and lazy people that DON'T spend hours working on them.

Why are they surprised when they don't get hired?

Monday, January 26, 2004

>> onomatopoetic

Yeah, that's what I meant. Thanks.

Bored Bystander
Monday, January 26, 2004

Bored, you just gave away your anonymity: You are Don Martin, confess.

hoser
Monday, January 26, 2004

Ga-Zing! Gang-Gang-Gang! Splorch! Schplutss! Ga-Wonga!

Sassy
Monday, January 26, 2004

Alas, I wish. A great humorist has been gone for awhile:

http://www.nachshon.org.il/~itzs/Html/dm_index.htm

Bored Bystander
Monday, January 26, 2004

Bunch of damn whiners is what the anti-resume-article people are.

Mister Fancypants
Monday, January 26, 2004

"Bunch of damn whiners is what the anti-resume-article people are. "

So you approve of stereotyping? The article is objectionable in tarring a nation of billion people with the same brush.

Monday, January 26, 2004

Not all stereotyping is equally bad. Stereotyping for comedic purposes is pretty common, so deal with it.

It isn't like he said "Hey, I'm never going to hire anyone from India".

Mister Fancypants
Monday, January 26, 2004

I loved that article, made me laugh. Been on the resume reading part once or twice and it is quite a nightmare. Don't understand what all the vitriol against the article is about. After all, the job advertised needs "l33t english skillz" and if you don't demonstrate that in your opening gambit...

Shodan
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

25 separate resume-related threads. Don't you guys think you're overdoing it?

Alyosha`
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Joel should've created a single thread for discussing the article. That would've kept it down to 3 threads, one of them with several hundred posts.

www.MarkTAW.com
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

The article was very entertaining. A barb in the ass of employees everywhere. Workers of the World, unite against the Zionist oppressors.

My humble question to be asked: After a period, should it be one space or two?

hoser
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

One space after a full stop is the norm on computers, two is old school typewriter stuff.

Sum Dum Gai
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Should one capitalise after a colon?

John Ridout
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

You capitalize after a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark. You only capitalize after a colon when you are using the colon instead of a comma to precede direct speech, as in

Joel announced over the loudspeaker to the whole population of India: "Remember to put the space after the comma, not before."

Stephen Jones
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

I thought when using the colon to precede direct speach that the speach is not encapsulated in quotes?

Damn, I'll never get a proper job. ;-)

John Ridout
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

To the best of my knowledge direct speech should always be encapsulated with speech marks.

It is not uncommon to have indirect speech after a colon.

Today the entire population of India stood to attention to recieve the latest advice from software guru, Joel Spolsky: always put the space after the comma, not before.

In this example the indirect speech is exactly the same as the direct speech.

Another place where you could put a capital after a colon is when the colon comes after a title. This is very common in resumes.

SKILLS: An immense talent for boring people to tears by rabbitting on about recondite aspects of English punctuation rules.

Where the colon is going to be followed by more than one sentence, you would also presumably have to make an exception and put a capital letter.

Joel Spolsky today gave the entire population of the world his views on resume writing: You must do everything Joel's way. Joel is always right. Make sure the background colour on your HTML message matches his handbag.

You could stick in semi-colons instead of full stops there, and thus obviate the need for an initial capital, but there are other cases where you might even have multiple paragraphs after the colon. You could make a personal rule to have a new paragraph after the colon in these cases, in which case the capital letter would be mandatory.

Few people know how to use the colon properly, so it seems silly to lose karma points by messing up the capitalization that comes after.

Stephen Jones
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

>One space after a full stop is the norm on computers, two is old school typewriter stuff.

Unfortunately, my mom, who is in her sixties, taught me to type. For the life of me, I cannot stop putting two spaces after a full stop.

McSqueeb
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

A capital commonly follows a colon in two scenarios: introducing direct speech and intoducing a list of which each item is a complete sentence. It is not commonly used to introduce indirect speech.

Hell is -- other people!

Any views on the dash?

John Ridout
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

I cannot bear it when people use comma splices in their resumes, it's a true offense on the language.

W.F. Buckley
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

From the current appearance of my resume, you'd think I pulled it out from somewhere in the vicinity of my colon.

No misplaced commas though.

Jimmy Jo-jo
Wednesday, January 28, 2004